


This Love

by Albiona



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Episode: s03e09 The Climb, F/M, Inspired by Music, Season/Series 03 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-04 11:43:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3066617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Albiona/pseuds/Albiona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Season 3, Episode 9 SPOILERS</p><p>When Felicity learns, she's in her car. And she's alone.</p><p>Inspired by "This Love" by Taylor Swift.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Love

She was in her car. Because she had to pretend everything was normal. So, when they didn't hear anything through the day and the night, she got up and went to work in the dress he left her in.

Ray hadn't said anything. He probably didn't notice. He barely looked at her. He asked her if she was okay twice. She lied three times.

"Yeah. Everything's fine." "I'm fine." "Really. I'm fine."

She'd gone to work. She reached five and she left.

So she was in her car on her way back to the Foundry when John called. 

She saw it was him and she pulled into the parking lot of a 24 hour pawn shop. A man with shapely thighs or a tall woman was dressed as a roll of bills with great white eyes, spinning a yellow-orange sign on the sidewalk.

She answered, car parked and idling sort-of in a space with her back to the bills.

"John, have you heard from him? Is he okay?"

Tears were squeezing themselves out of Felicity's eyes. She was confused. He hadn't said anything yet.

"He--" his voice broke apart. 

"Is Oliver okay?" she asked again. 

Roy told her. Roy took the phone. He said, "No."

She was in her car. And she didn't know what to do.

She pulled back into traffic, not that there was much for the bills to wave to. She drove. When she got to the pier, she stopped. She locked the doors. She squinted. The sun pressed through a sliver of flat, slate-grey clouds and bounced to her off the uneven water's surface.

She scooted into her backseat. Lay down. Shut her eyes. 

She imagined him walking along the pier after Slade Wilson killed Moira. How lost he'd looked when Laurel had found him, when they'd drugged him to get him back to the Foundry.

One hand on the seat cushion, she mimed shucking back a hood. Just as he'd done when he'd asked her to help him. To save his life. The motion felt good so she did it again. Again. Again. Wetting the fabric, knees curled up to her chest, she let a thin scream slip from her throat.

She didn't know what to do.

She wanted him to hold her. Touch her shoulder. Take her hand.

"Say it again," Felicity whispered.

She wanted his lips on her forehead. She wanted him to tell her he loves her.

She wanted all of his weight, the sturdy unyielding of his huge mass, to weigh down on her and keep her together. She'd close her arms around him and never loosen her grip. Felicity would do anything to keep him there.

"Say it again."

She didn't realize that she had been pressing her feet into the door until her heel burst through the plastic siding, splintering it. She wanted to calculate the force necessary for her to have done that. How much did she actually have inside her? Cisco would know. He'd have already measured the diameter of her heel, calculated the density of the wood or plastic or whatever and the casing of the door.

Oh, no. _Barry._

Felicity shut her eyes and rolled her face into the seat.

_Thea._

A hot burst for Merlyn. She imagined arrows piercing him all over his body. She shook and wiped the image off with the back of her hand.

_Laurel._

\--- ---- ---

"He's dead," she whispered.

"What?"

She said it again, and this time her voice trembled.

Barry didn't answer.

She pushed her heel into the new cavern in the door. The plastic cracked as another splinter broke off and slipped down inside the door.

He knocked on the car window. She yelped. She looked at him. She rolled away.

He left.

He came back. After going to the Foundry.

She still wouldn't answer. Wouldn't look. Wouldn't listen to the wrong voice saying her name.

He sat on the hood until she fell asleep. He sat until she woke up.

When she opened the door, head full of thunderheads, and stood, he stood in front of her.

She met his eyes.

He'd been crying.

"Someone has to tell Thea. And Laurel."

"Mr. Diggle's already done it."

The sky’s last streaks, purple and pink, were fading. She squeezed her eyes shut.

No beauty. No more.

"I have to see about Roy," she said.

"No, you don't. You have to see about you."

He slid his arms under hers and lifted. He held her, suspended, offending shoe dangling from her toes.

"I loved him," she muttered, tears retracing their sisters' paths down her cheeks.

"Huh?" he set her down and pulled back.

She shook her head, stepping back into her shoe. He wiped her face.

"Would you drive me home?" she asked.

\--- ---- ---

“Is this the first time?” he whispered, hands on her trembling arms. “Since, Oliver.”

Ray was shirtless in his bedroom. A penthouse. Glass everywhere. Like being in her office at Queen Consolidated.

“We didn’t—” she began, shaking her head, looking at her hands on his chest. “We never—”

Felicity met his eyes to force Oliver’s from her mind.

“We were friends,” she said.

She couldn’t say ‘just’. They were never ‘just’.

Not to her.

“We don’t have to,” he breathed.

She knew that. But she wanted something. She wanted _something._

So she kissed him. And he let her fingers graze his lower back. And she let him take her zipper in his huge, un-calloused hand.

But she didn’t sleep well. He slept like the dead.

No. Not like that.

She rolled over and, prying his crossed arm up, slipped her head within his sphere.

He smiled. She shut her eyes and felt his breath against her eyelids.

She fell asleep.

She woke, pushed herself away. She sat on the edge by the glass. When he reached for her, rubbing the base of her spine with his knuckles, she pressed into the warmth. She lay back down.

He dragged the duvet over her and lay one arm on top. He kissed her shoulder. He was asleep again in moments.

He’d stood beside her during the funeral. He’d pressed his arm into hers. She'd curled away from him, into her mother, who came when Felicity called.

She left Ray in the bed. Went home. Took a shower. Then she went to the Foundry. She took his pillow out of the bag under the stairs. She lay down on the bed she'd bought him. She pressed his pillow to her eyes. She didn’t have any more tears.

A few hours later, she realized she was wrong.

\--- ---- ---

She was alone. Because it was early morning, not that any light had reached into the Foundry yet. Roy and Diggle had each tried to get her to move in with them, when they’d realized that she never left before them. Never left. Since she wouldn’t sleep in her apartment. Not when his scent was _here_.

Ray hadn’t offered. Because he didn’t know the truth. Even though he’d pinged her phone to Verdant twice. The club wasn’t quite empty yet either time.

She heard a step that didn’t belong to her. She shoved herself off the bed and snuck backwards in her yellow socks, against the wall. She slid open a drawer, took one of Arsenal’s explosives.

“Hello?”

His voice.

She stopped. 

No.

She was alone. She was alone.

“Felicity?”

He stepped into her view.

Air sucked into her lungs and she squeezed the explosive into her palm.

“Felicity,” he said. He was smiling. He reached for her.

She shook.

“N—No,” she shook her head. Everything shook. “You aren’t here. You're like your ghosts. Tommy. And…Shado. And Wilson. Who, it turns out, wasn’t a ghost. But we didn’t know that.”

He was smiling. He looked thrilled. Ecstatic. Overjoyed. In love.

She squeezed her eyes shut.

“But you—” she couldn’t help reaching for him. Her voice shattered so she whispered, pressing her back to the wall, “You aren’t real.”

“Felicity.”

He took her hand. He took her face. He took the explosive and laid it back in the drawer.

She sobbed, pressing into the warmth.

“You aren’t here,” she repeated. Meeting his eyes, pressing her nails into his hands, she darkened. Said it again.

“You’ve been sleeping in my bed?” he asked.

She shook her head. She nodded.

“I love you,” she said.

The heels of his hands pressed gently into her jaw, lifting her face.

So she opened her eyes.

Radiance. Sunlight. Gold and orange and white everywhere. From his face.

He kissed her. And feeling came back, through her lips, her neck, a trickling widening to a rushing. She clung to his arms.

When he drew back, just enough to part their lips, and she pressed her face into his neck, pushed her body flush against his.

“You are the best delusion ever.”

He chuckled. She felt it all through her.

“How are you here?” she asked.

“Tommy.”

She opened her hands. She stepped away. His mouth fell limp but he still looked thrilled.

“Now I know you aren’t real.”

“Felicity.”

She stepped forward, seized the bottom of his shirt and lifted. She wasn’t looking at his face anymore. She was squinting, just barely, like when running down a digital lead.

“Felicity?”

She made a noise, so he tucked his shoulders and dragged his shirt off into a ball in his fist.

She ran her fingers over his skin. Everywhere. And she found something. A new scar. Long. Thin. Between two of his ribs. Not on the side she’d imagined. Not on his right side, his strong side. 

“How did you survive?”

He pressed his lips.

“I didn’t.”

She stepped around him, under his lifted arm, and found the other side with her fingers.

Finally, a sob cracked through her chest and she tilted onto her knees.

“We buried you,” she cried. She seized his leg with both arms. He knelt, sat, pulled her into his sphere. “Thea buried you again.”

“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“How?” She demanded. He cocked his head. He kissed her forehead. She inched her fingers under his arms, across his skin and his scars. She found the new one on his back, covered it with her palm.

“Love,” he said.

She cursed. He laughed. 

“We told everyone,” she answered. “Thea. Barry. Laurel. Walter. The internet.”

“I know.”

“So you’re going to come back from the dead twice?”

“Yeah. Think you could help me?”

She cursed. She scrambled off of him. She seized her phone.

_Foundry. 911. Oliver._

Roy could see him. Hugged him. Diggle punched him. Oliver let him.

She wasn’t alone.

**Author's Note:**

> "This love is good. This love is bad.  
> The love is alive, back from the dead.  
> These hands had to let it go free  
> and this love came back to me."
> 
> Inspired by “This Love” by Taylor Swift.  
> Dedicated to pumpkinonwheels, who saw it's Olicity parallels and introduced me to the song.


End file.
